photo from my dumb phone

Posted on October 25, 2012 by George C. Hartman


I am very old school with bills. I still put a check in an envelope, lick it and stick it in a mailbox. Not only old school but stupid. I have been slowly converting to on-line bill paying and most recently, in order to avoid another late fee I logged into my dumb phone account on-line. Interesting little tid bit on the bottom of my page: “Album” So it was there I found some photos that have been sent to me and ones I have taken many years old. This one ‘Window and Sun” I remember taking this photo. It was many years ago. I usually carry a camera with me at all times but in this case I loved what I saw but had no camera and resorted to my dumb phone.
Now here it is, many years later, the memory fresh but I have no idea where it was and why I was there. Something inside of me says Jersey City but Im just not sure.
I am sharing this photo for two reasons. One is the age and complete mystery of it. The other reason is that for a dumb phone, this is a cool shot. I like grainy, blurry, miss-cropped photos. Sometimes I have to go to Photoshop to achieve these results with the clean digital crap that I get out of my point and shoot. My dumb phone takes bad pictures and does the Photoshop work for me.

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What Goes Without Saying

Posted on October 22, 2012 by George C. Hartman

The ART of Appreciation or
The Appreciation of ART
I enjoy this ____ because ____
I respect this ____ because ____
I admire this ____ because ____
I appreciate this ____ because ____
I think this _____ is worthwhile because ____
I love this ____ because ____

July 2012 New York City
The city. In a nutshell I missed you terribly and yearned for that thundering subway underneath my tattered (I’m in shatters) sneakers. (Sha doo bee) The stench of rotting sewers sweltering above as we wait for the green flashing WALK. My balls tingle as we rise rise rise above the sweltering elevator of un-airconditioned heat. (Sha doo bee, shattered shattered)

Diary of a Sex Addict
scene 32
Greenwich Village. A crowded outdoor Cafe.
CoCo: That’s a nice camera.
Butch: Bigger is better.
CoCo: (signaling for a check) Not always.
Butch: I’m not talking about cameras.
CoCo: (annoyed) Why change the subject?
Butch: Because I’ve been watching you walk around the Guggenheim in that sexy dress all day.
CoCo: (laughing) Oh, lets’s get a room, then!
Butch: How about a secluded back alley off Bleeker street?
CoCo: Cheapskate!
Butch: No. Thrill seeker.
CoCo: Mmmmm, that does sound intriguing. I dare you!
Butch: I dare us!

The Gone-by Days of When I Drove a Forklift on the Nightshift.
or Goggling Your Own Name
Entering a new drag and drop dimension Funny how life works in ebbs and flows. A lot of blogs I read are written through rose-colored glasses. We all have a tendency to sugar-coat our own life – social networking gives us that opportunity every day.
When I woke up, I was 18 and working at a warehouse across the railroad tracks and over the West Carteret bridge. I woke up drunk because bed-time wasn’t but a few hours ago. (spent most of the night driving around with Glenn Haley drinking Bud nips. (7 ozs bottles) I don’t know why we always got those nips. I think because we were driving and if we got pulled over maybe it would be easier to hide.
In the past the Summers are always hotter and easier. There were no cops or confusion. Just drinking and adrenaline laced adventures.
My fork truck was #30 and I named it Wharf Rat. Written on the side in black magic marker forever. One of the faster in a large fleet of fork trucks. I was young, dumb and full of cum. My pony tail curled up into a twisted blonde ball, my beard a wiry mess.. Wharf Rat was my horse and I rode her into the sunrise of the receiving dock hangover in tow. This was my life for too many years and I thought I would die there in the long aisles of warehoused sporting goods.
Back to the closet of another job here in the future. One final kiss before the time travel. Kryha is so into passionate kissing Now to a different warehouse on a rainy night and the smell of fresh cut pine.
You’re face is glowing red in the distant sun of the EXIT sign.
Yes, I have said goodbye to all my friends of the past. Some are even dead now, but I’m going to see them again.
Mc (pronounced “Mick”) Gitts (pronounced “Skeeter”) Bill Brunner (pronounced “Bill), Hoy (part of the original Banana Splits) Stuff, Beds, Dino, Puppet, Nutty, Pokey, Bobby Orr, Bok (pronounced “Baaaaaaaak) God I miss these fucking bastards.

I accidently by all
no fault of mine

traveled via blue sky many years ahead
waking up in twisted wet sheets

a man breathing, walking white halls
pulling around squeaky wheels

his oxygen tank
into pristine whiteness and

florescent dementia and weed cancer
in the retirement home

of ex designers and production printers
spray paint freshness of the train muralist

(pronounced “Graffiti”) crazy old people
mostly men and my sister Bonita visiting me

So I must be in Ohio, she sits on a white surreal plastic chair
flirting with the younger male receptionist

I miss driving most of all and texting
and the rest of my family where ever they have gone

I don’t recognize my hands
and I’m missing a finger

Kryha is in Poland milking cows
with rich Asia on a golden farm with huge bales of hay

you always told me “I’m not going to take care of you”
I appreciate your honesty, emails, and electronic brain photos

of Polish hillsides
and those strange looking trees

you always liked to paint
“I am in love..” you type “…with another…

…bucket of hot foamy milk”
and brown crispy fresh baked bread

the jagged fields of berries
are radioactive red! those damn Ruskies!

the sky is swirling with doubt
I am an old fox in a florescent cage (pronounced

retirement home) waking up alone
with a nurse washing my armpits

All the Arctic animals have melted
everyones warm laptops scream the news

Outside my recycled window the bravest hour
strikes my analog clock

My desire to live will never go away
is what my sister whispers in my ear
(to be continued this post)

Inventing Abstraction
Man of Construction says this: Can you climb that ladder on the hottest day of Summer
carrying tools, strip the three layers of old roof off and install a new roof?
Man of Printing says in return: No. But can you scan a high resolution image, color correct, clean, clone and print?
Man of Construction then says: No. So I guess we are even?
Man of Printing says this: Yes, pretty even I guess, except that I didn’t emasculate you in front of your mate like you did to me.
Moral: “Say it once again now-
Oh I hope you understand-
When it’s done and over
Lord, a man is just a man”

The wind whispers yet another rainy Jersey Shore evening
Butch: (looking off into the distance) I want to change the world!
CoCo: Oh yeah? You don’t have any money.
Butch: (shakes his head out of a daydream) Money! Who needs money to change the world?
CoCo: (laughing out loud) You need money for everything dear.
Outside the thunder and pounding rain on the boardwalk invite warmth and love into the warm cozy hotel room.
Butch: I love thunder.
CoCo: Perfect timing too. You are going through another Super Hero stage.
Butch: (after taking a deep breath) You don’t need a super power to change the world. When you wake up to the blessings and gift of another day, you must face it with the willingness to do the best that you can. Be kind to every person you meet. It’s not easy. Neither is judging. When I meet somebody for the first time, in my mind, I have them all figured out within ten seconds. Their aura is sucked into my brain and most times I configure people to be less of a human then me. I am learning to stop this quick judgement of people. If there is a leach on your back, it is probably sucking the life out of you and you don’t even know it. This leach has the capabilities to to suck all the monies, strength, and dreams from your body and soul. The leach is in a place on your back where you can’t reach it. Everybody sees the leach on your back but they can’t pull it off for you. That leach is yours and only yours..or so you think. Until the day comes when you can finally reach around and pull that F-ing thing off your back, you MUST walk tall and act as if it isn’t there.
A leach will never learn to live for itself. It’s whole world depends on sucking from you twenty-four seven. I have the super powers of sobriety, calmness, patience, love and most of all: GRATITUDE. You can fly through the clouds self-doubt. Break through the brick walls of depression. The day the leach falls off your back, curls up and crawls away, you will realize that it was indeed years and years of this leach that has actually made a super hero out of you!
CoCo: I have a craving for cheese perogi.

(the continuation)
I know if anybody knows
the trails and cliffs of time travel

Whose are these doors I open?
where strangers in white shadows swim

If you’re driving down a ONE WAY street
in a refurbished pick-up full of trees

thank you for not turning around
the snow flurries carried me home

Ill miss your Chinese eyes
Ill miss your chicken soup

A robot cleans my room today so
grab a brush and paint your dreams

End
(pronounced “see ya later”)

Posted in friends, Gratitude, Krystina, the beginning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1,464 Comments

the Interview

Posted on September 18, 2012 by George C. Hartman

do you like our fake trees?
why are you two feet taller than me?
do you have a degree?
why did you leave this job?
have you ever painted a sunset?
why are you staring at me like that?
do you masturbate in the shower?
have you ever raised honey bees?
is that florescent light too bright?
did you just put that wedding band on this morning?
have you ever spent seventeen days in jail?
do you believe in God?
what time is it when the mouse runs up the clock?
did you vote for Reagan?
have you ever been affiliated with alcoholics anonymous?
quickly, what is the square root of thirty-seven?
are you attracted to me?
how many siblings do you have?
are any of them gay?
can you honestly compare work experience with four years of college?
do you like my perfume?
i got it as a gift from my secret lover
we meet in the park at lunch time
what is your paypal password?
is this the best you can do?
i have several, oh maybe ten more applicants to interview
can you be reached at this number?

neonduskmondayaugust142000628pm

“Do you like them in a box?
do you like them with a fox?”
-Dr Suess

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Taking out the Garbage

Posted on September 12, 2012 by George C. Hartman

All the Hartman garbage went to the Carteret dumps. I think our neighbors were even amazed by that. With ten kids and tons of friends, two parents and some pets we had A LOT of garbage. This was many years before mandatory recycling and we would fill ten steel garbage cans. “121” spray painted on each of the ten cans so nobody would steal them, like somebody is actually going to steal a garbage can. The garbage came fast and furious and some of the cans were so heavy that taking them out required several people and one of which hopefully had a degree in engineering. These cans were battered to hell. None of the lids lasted more then one week, (those were probably stolen) and the rusty ripped open sides made things even more adventurous. The holes actually worked in our favor if they were close to the bottom. This would filter out, what me and my brothers called “Garbage Juice”. Garbage Juice was an accumulation of everything liquid that can be garbage. It settled to the bottom of the can and mixed up into a real stinky and disgusting potpourri of absolutely lethal proportions.
How do I know this? Because one foggy garbage day evening I was told to “Take out the damn garbage.” which I obediently did. Carteret N.J. did not have this elite service where they came to the side of the house and quietly took your garbage to the truck and then came back with your empty pails to where they belonged. No, you had to take the garbage to the curb and if it wasn’t there (like it wasn’t many times) then it stayed on the side of the house. While dragging out one particularly old can one day, the sharp edge of a hole ripped into my calf and deposited several ounces of fresh garbage juice into the open wound.

Ten cans of garbage. Twice a week.

It was a very lucky thing that I was young, strong and had a good immune system because otherwise I think I wouldn’t have survived the ordeal. “How did this happen?” my mother asked after the swelling finally went down one week later. “It was the garbage juice, Mom, that stuff is really bad.” as to which my mother asked, “What the hell is garbage juice !?!” Carteret had city workers in city trucks come by twice a week to pick up garbage. How I envied our neighbors, The Gitter’s and Deloredo’s how they neatly packed their garbage into one or two cans juice free. The Hartman’s were the freaks of the neighborhood. Our ten rusty split steel cans of overflowing horror was an amazing display.
Today in a modern museum it might be called an ” art installation” SO HERE COMES the raggedy old blue and white hand painted Carteret Garbage Department Trucks coming down the street. It was a chance to actually see a black person in our town as I remember these guys like it yesterday. They were hard working and dedicated men. They were fast. They were loud. They were proud. They hung on the backs of the trucks and surveyed their next target. Jumping off the truck and sliding the ridiculously heavy ten cans and heaving them up into the back. When the back got filled they would hit a lever on the side and this giant mechanical bar would come down and scoop out the back and pull it into the truck. This was a magical act that the entire sidestreet gang found extremely fascinating. We would follow this damn truck for blocks and the skinny black men hanging on the sides must have certainly thought these little white kids had very boring childhoods to be following the garbage truck. I’ll tell you what it was certainly better then the street cleaner but nothing ever came close to The Mosquito Man. The Mosquito Man was and always will be a legend in it’s own time.

“hey, slow down Mosquito man!”

I remember these leaky old garbage trucks clanging and banging through the streets…leaving potent trails of garbage juice and flies. It was the great mystery, later in our childhood that we would conquer the great unknown mystery of ….The Carteret Dumps….where they actually took the garbage. If you never visited a garbage dump then you haven’t completely seen the world.
Our garbage situation was so intense that one day my father bought home a Sears Garbage Compactor. This was without a doubt one of the biggest wasted investments in 121 Whitman Street that ever was. The only thing that it was good for was for scaring friends and neighbors that visited and put our cats in there and pretend to hit the “COMPACT” button. I think at peak, the garbage compactor actually did cut our garbage output by two or three cans a week. But the thing wasn’t industrial and we wore it out after a year, besides the “compact bags” that came with it ran out. Buying new ones turned out to be an expensive ordeal so I think the white Sears Super Garbage Compactor (for households) turned into a nice side table to hold six-packs of bud and unfinished homework.

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Heart of Darkness II

Posted on September 11, 2012 by George C. Hartman

f-life mother f-er’s


Fevor
In twenty-four hours I had been sick and sicker then I have ever been in a long time. The aches, pains and sweating were the easy part compared to the feverish nightmares. It all began with a powerful sneeze in a train station in Seacacus NJ and very slowly advanced into a lost day and a half of tangled sheets and chills. You can almost recognize the power of the brain when you witness what it does when you body is burning up in fever. Your mind is a movie house of horrors. The movie replaying over and over again. As you sit in your seat gripping the armrests with horror, you know it will all end but you think that if it doesn’t you can fully understand why people would commit suicide.
As the cool wind blows and yesterdays news tumbles to your feet, you can wipe your brow for the last time. But the snots are still like a river. It is a human metamorphous to emerge from the sheets one morning. You have survived and hope to never go there again.

—My eldest son’s holy trinity: Red Bull, Hot Wings and Heavy Metal.

—To the philanthropist: Your tongue is mightier then the sword. You’re killing me.

— Oh Mrs. Mc H —Wherever you go … there you are.

Anthony
Anthony wasn’t a close friend of mine, as a matter of fact I hardly knew him. The spaces were so far apart in between our meetings that he actually forgot he had already told me his life story and would repeat himself every time we met. Anthony was certainly different then most alcoholics, perhaps there was a more severe bipolar thing going on inside his mind. When somebody takes their own life you can’t help but wonder what was going on inside their head leading up to that moment that they find themselves alone and make such a decision as Anthony did. One night shortly after his huge funeral, I was sitting in a hot tub with some other people that knew him when I was asked, “What’s your take on Anthony?” And I was speechless. I couldn’t put it together yet. It was too early. I was really shocked. Death has always fascinated me, scared me, and captured my thoughts. I finally came to the conclusion that Anthony’s brain had succumbed to damage from his drinking. The last time I saw him he seemed really out of it almost like he was mentally ill. I also think that the period when he told everyone he was sober, he wasn’t. I believe he had a a thing that chronic drinkers get called wet brain syndrome When this happens it is irreversible and that’s pretty much the end of the show. I also don’t think it helped Anthony’s cause that he was rejected and verbally battered for many years by his girlfriends family. That’ll take a toll on even the soberest man in the world. People are people. Some are sicker then others. There is no room for ignorance of this proportion in the world. You don’t hate and reject human beings. You pray for them and try to help them. Too late ignorant people, too late.

The right way to end a story.
After the sunsets and the longest hottest Summer EVER is finally over, the actors and actresses will realize that everyone had already left a long time ago. The writers will smack the sides of their head and realize that their writers block had never ended. This was the Summer of nothing. A dried up ocean of desert sand with no waves and a sun hotter then a preheated oven in hell. A vegetable garden that, to me, produced weird stuff. A drought of happiness that led into a deep depression. I’m still waiting for the day when I will wake up refreshed.

The Blues
Today has been cancelled. I can’t listen to people anymore. My coworkers speak Spanish, struggle in English, dance to latino music while they work. Read my lips when I speak to them from the managerial pedestal. They understand me, but I am slow to learn. At home it’s a different language and I am lost in Polish. English is just not part of my normal day but I love it, it’s an adventure in listening and learning. I’m so confused.
Working on this blog is a unique kind of torture. The only safe place is within.

The Blues have been strangling me lately.

im waking up opposite from you upside down
so far apart and the faint smell of sex in the 6am morning sun
(so it must be summer but what day
? ahhhh, wednesday so i will go to work but even my snoring again
must have flipped you around and I face your feet
CLIMBING over you and knocking over plastic fan again
creaking toward now simmering heat this way too long
summer of moths, the olympics and unending heat
THIS is about when the now negative chemistry
deep blue almost black neon lights at night flickering
with my emotions these empty rooms and old carpets in my head

IT USED TO BE every day was magical but then something happens
the endless grind of living maybe. the never-ending sucking leach (more about this leach in a later episode)
on a part of your unreachable back. a bubbling of bad chemicals in the brain

TRULY A TOTAL LOSS of gratitude, faith, and money Taking restless
naps in the hot car Tossing and turning like empty trees in winter
shaking off the fuck-it-all-blues.

“Happy Horseshit” somewhere in this mixed media day I heard this forgotten expression and it has since become my new battle cry.
The bad thing about Barnes & Noble the bookstore/cafe is that it’s not a library and you can’t “shhhhh” people on the phone or tell them to “shut the hell up, I don’t care about your happy horseshit!”
To all my unlovable political IDIOTS burying my social media world in all your CRAP: Solutions, not signatures and if you think spoon-fed Rommney is gonna do better you have mashed potatoes for brains. Nobody is EVER gonna be a good president of the United States again. It was allot simpler in the 1800’s and up to the turn of the century. There were less people living here and most of them that did, GREW THEIR OWN FOOD and slaughtered their own meat. Life was FRESH and SIMPLE with no fucking preservatives. Why do you think the health care issue is what it it is today (Besides GREED) we have all these diseases, heart disease, cancer etc etc and including autism because man insists on screwing around with nature! Stop putting shit in our food and the cows food you dumb bastards, You are what you eat. Health Care is what it is because even with a successful surgery PEOPLE ARE STILL SUEING! Authorities are still catching people and groups of people stealing from the health care system. MONEY has become god in this stupid country. Everyone has to have a big fancy car because they watch too much blaring TV with commercials that tell you what you have to have. And most dumb asses BELIEVE that happiness comes to us through television and movies. Most dumb asses will steal, kill and go into tremendous debt to obtain that TV- driven message.
When we lived in log cabins that we built with our neighbors and grew food with our VERY OWN mud-caked hands and sat around a fire with our family, it was because THERE WAS NO TV. There were also no mortgages, no crazy insane diseases, and we didn’t need pills for everything. When life was REAL, you fell asleep naturally because you were so damn tired from plowing the field or your wife.
I found out recently that it’s illegal to keep chickens in your yard where I live. What a bunch of HAPPY HORSESHIT !!

Nobody Understands Why I Sit Next To These Churning Rivers Of Ideas
The past has it’s place, I agree. I shouldn’t dwell in it but it’s so freaking cool I just can’t stand it! Beam me up Scotty, there is nothing better then a well made movie about time travel. The latest one for me just happens to be Woodey “the genuis” Allens fantastic film, “Midnite In Paris” ONCE I was in an antique store somewhere in the hills of Pennsylvania with some hip chick wearing a swirly hippy dress and I found a big old wooden box. Not that the box was so damn cool but it was filled with old postcards…not that the postcards were so damn old and cool BUT they were USED. There were handwritten messages, address, stamps and lipstick kisses from the past. I was so enthralled with this, that I spent an hour in front of them. My swirly-girlie-hippy chick had to finally drag me out of that place so that we could dig into so Tai Food at some freaky Indian place on the side of the Hudson river.
Now, over lunch, and the smell of searing tuna, I explained to my colorful friend that I needed to go back and maybe even purchase some of those “neat-O” postcards from the past. As her eyes rolled (a typical expression of ALL my female friends) I heard her say “That’s a bunch of happy horseshit that I’m not going to do. We have a steam boat to ride.”
Hippy Goils are so sweet and yummy on the outside but on the inside they are just plain old females. Sort of like M&M’s they melt in your mouth but you can get sick if you eat too many of them.

Things I Never Regret As A Father:
1. Getting divorced.
2. Getting divorced.
3. Getting divorced.

WHY?
…as the only patron in Barnes and Noble does the coffee chemist behind the counter have to ask me for my name and write it on the cup?
My problem as a writer and photographer is that I’m always thinking that amazing revelations are to be found in the blandest most boring facts of daily life.
And THAT my friends is a bunch of happy horseshit. Today and hopefully not tomorrow.

We really need to get away. Nature is the deepest relief. Ocean or Forest. I don’t care which. Just show me the way. I’ll drive. I’ll pay the tolls. I’ll fill the tank.

How I Met Your…
One day boy, I tell ya, one day I’ll wake up from this unconscious stroll thru life and I’ll realize that I was a slave to money, yeah, evil moolah. You were waiting for me on the other side of the automatic doors looking fresh and pout. Your ass crack showed when you leaned over to kiss me. Yeah, you think I closed my eyes? I forgot to buy flowers but they would have died in my un-air-conditioned car from the early senventies. A Ford Pinto, a time bomb that could explode on impact. A fiery painful death for sure. The Pinto only had two front doors so you couldn’t get out if you were in the back seat and you were rear-ended. And that was why you would never understand why I never came to meet you. Why I never drove with you. I have always had nightmares of claustrophobia. I think I was suffocated or drowned in my previous life.
But there we were; In the middle of the produce aisle. Soggy broccoli being shoveled into the garbage. Parsnips freshly cut. The smell of onions and your french perfume. Organic cabbage. Small and soft. Cucumbers, like cocks lined up, I was disappointed you didn’t stop to lift them up, and feel them, squeeze them, like you are supposed to do while shopping in the produce aisle. These nuclear vegetables, they just don’t grow things the way they used to. So as they say, we lived happily ever not after, chasing vegetarian dreams and after several years, I caught you sneaking into the meat department.
That was the sunrise of our next ten thousand meals together. Holding hands and taking cracker samples until we couldn’t eat anymore. Wouldn’t you know there was a TV to watch while we checked out. You read People. The coupons saved us a fortune and I wanted to spend the extra cash on a new car with air conditioning. But you said I was too frivolous.

Posted in friends, Gratitude, Self Portrait, Tall Tales, the beginning | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Heart of Darkness

Posted on August 19, 2012 by George C. Hartman

A digital exercise in painting and depression.

Posted in the beginning | 11 Comments

That Orange Hue of Summer

Posted on June 27, 2012 by George C. Hartman

AM radio. Yes, it still exists. In all this new technology and stuff..the crackle and pop of an all talk AM radio at night is much more therapeutic then meeting 100 phony “friends” on FaceBook. As a matter of fact FB has become a real crap hole. I think I have too many asshole “friends” that just recycle cute shit and sayings. Facebook has become what emails became before they got stupid and old. Just really bad recycled garbage. I started a Twitter account and began following people. Real people. Real companies. Real writers and poets. Legitimate photographers and professional designers and they gave REAL links. Stuff that I wanna read and share…not talking fucking dogs and really bad photos of “I don’t give a shits” birthday. Twitter is my rebirth into the social network.
But AM radio is my therapeutic link to my past. It is a warm hot womb of bad music, news and talk shows. I’m so old that when I was a kid an AM radio was the only thing that came equipped with a new car. When FM radio came out it was a major break thru in my time. I said to my friends: “This is the end of AM radio” …and it wasn’t…Thank God.

My kids and I always go to the boardwalk in the Winter. It is rather mysterious and fun. There are no swarms of clueless New Yorkers, traffic or stupidity and everything is open. My kids hate when I take their photo. If I pull out a camera, I get the same reaction as if I had just pulled out an Ak-47. So we went down by the waves and naturally I take my camera out. This photo is the best shot I got of them with my zoom lens. I love black and white and added some grain and lightening effects in Photoshop.

Never felt more far away from my children and family as I do now. In the beginning, when I started my current job, I was so wrapped up with working and THOUGHT I was doing the right thing. The right thing was … well, working of corse. You need money to do everything. My kids needed my child support. I just so have happened to have ended up far away. If there is a happy medium between working too much and too hard and having time to spend with the people that you love…I will never find it. So your damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Is Grant getting better?

Advice to the jobless: You have to start somewhere and that may be not exactly what you want but dig in anyway. I was weed whacking for ten bucks an hour in ninety degree heat and submitting digital resumes in air conditioned cafe’s at dusk.(But even though I wasn’t working these were good times…because I knew I was doing the best that I could in a bad situation)
I’ve had an uncanny sense of good feelings for things in the past. For example when I bought a winning 5 thousand dollar ticket to the lottery ten years ago….I knew it was a winner even before the numbers were drawn. When I was handed that ticket from the cashier a very starnge feeling came over me. When someone once called me for an interview, I just knew in the back of my mind that I would get that job. Don’t be scared. Go into interviews and act like you got the job. This has been my experience and I have lot’s of it. I have been on both sides of the desk. When I hire someone I want to hear yes to evey question. Can you do this? Can you do that? Yes. Yes. Yes. Not one little “I don’t know” or “but” YES is the answer. No hesitation. And seriously, how in the fucking world can you not come in at the time I scheduled you to come in? Your fucking unemployed, you have nowhere to go and nothing to do.

That Orange Glow in the sky
Now, in the deadly heat of the end of June. The tomatoes are planted and exploding through the cages. The flowers are towering and out of control. It is Summer. It is so so hot. Embrace it in, all your sweat and misery. Find yourself at the end of the endless day out in the” wilderness” of a north Jersey backyard surrounded by lightening bugs, the birds territorial yapping and dog barks. This is where I have found myself. (Gosh, I just love that expression-“I found myself..”It’s almost as if you had nothing to do with getting there.) So I found myself watering the flowers that are now taller then me and the thirsty tomato plants. This is an exciting end for a guy who spends 12 hours behind a desk in a windowless room. A room filled with air compressors going on and off all day. A room filled with loud Spanish music (is it a love song? who fucking knows) A room filled with Spanish speaking Amigos firing staple guns like machine fire over and over again into the pine stretcher bars and canvas. The humming of the ink jets. The insatiable production line and problem solving, the growing quality control issues. Broken English conversations and Photoshop is running slow again. I need to create a new preferences file on my Mac.
Now that orange glow in the back yard waits. I FOUND MYSELF there…alone….the sun sunk but leaving it’s orange hue everywhere. Finally maybe some peace, some quiet, some time to think. The cold water from the hose misting my face. I love lightening bugs…they are almost magical and tonight there seems to be thousands of them. This is one of those moments that you cherish in life. This is where you have found yourself.

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Nevada 1975

Posted on May 22, 2012 by George C. Hartman

talking to a mountain
her breath the wind
her hair the pines
laying down across her back
and shoulders “where lost
souls roam upon you
sleepless nights and campfires do you
ever grow tired of us?”

(with the sun peeking over her)
“i love the taste of the morning
my imperfect body covered with snow
i touch your visions and guide you
(a tear dangles beneath her eye)
I knew your grandfathers parents
and their parents
have seen fire and ice
life and
death
my arms are always open
my trails forever evident.”

reaching majestically into a star filled sky
exhaling into a black silk smoothness
the crickets now singing
against the nights heavy curtain
Now
the mountain sleeps.
cradling her fragile love for
her mother,
the earth.

neonduskmondayjune719991037pm

As I walked through the wilderness of this world,
I lighted on a certain place where was a Den,
and I laid me down in that place to sleep;
and as I slept, I dreamed a Dream.
~The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan, 1675~

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Diary of a Sex Addict (a play)

Posted on May 22, 2012 by George C. Hartman

The Final Scene

A classic red velvet curtain opens to an empty wooden stage. Butch walks out from behind the back curtain, struggling a bit with finding an opening and then almost tripping. He walks to center stage and stops in the center. A stage hand, with an unlit cigar hanging from his mouth, walks out with a silver retro microphone. He places it in front of Butch and adjust it to the height of his mouth. He connects a wire that he was carrying to the microphone stand and a sudden large squelch startles Butch. As the stagehand slowly walks away, Coco emerges from front of the stage right wearing a stunning blue evening gown and carrying a hand held microphone. She stops at center stage, slightly to the left and in front of Butch by twenty or so feet. She gazes blankly out into the crowd. The already dimly lit stage lights begin to fade and at the same time separate spot lights begin to turn up on Coco and Butch.
As the scene goes on, several stagehands carry out life-like male undressed mannequins and place them on the stage. They are placed randomly around Butch at all angles. By the end of the scene there will be over one hundred undressed mannequins on the stage nearly and then totally covering Butch from view.
Coco: (lifts up the microphone that she has been holding on her side) How do I begin? What have I done? (looks down at her feet)
Butch: I remember the first words you ever wrote to me. “You’ve got to be kidding.” Yup that’s what you wrote to me in our first email exchange. But now, no, I wasn’t kidding. I was married, two young kids. I was working in a huge dot com company during the big dot com explosion. Times were good. No, times were GREAT. The sun shinned everyday. Stocks seemed to split every month. Bonus were multiple and huge. We took two hour lunches paid for by the company. Everyday was a celebration. I had a brand new home in an all-white neighborhood surrounded by an all-white town. We lived by the ocean deep in the scrub pines of south Jersey.
Coco: I have no regrets in my life so far. I am who I am and who I will always be. It, what ever “it” is is rooted to my soul. Carried on through generations. It clutches to my heart with iron claws.
Butch: We met at a design conference somewhere in Florida. The internet was in it’s infancy. It was so raw and clumsy. We fell in love with each other before we even saw each other. But I knew you through hundreds of emails. Like a blind man feeling someone’s face.
(Now some of the mannequins being carried out are different brown and beige and some are females.)
Coco: I tried to be normal. Go to school. Have a husband…well I did have a husband….several. I tried. I prayed. I begged. I took pills.
Butch: I remember that picnic we had..somewhere up high overlooking a river. There was that slow moving barge that took all day to go by. The picnic basket filled with cheese and fruit. Going down to the banks to throw rocks.
Coco: I feel like a magician, how I make it through the day, appearing in places I shouldn’t be, while people wait for me on the other side of the curtain. Queen of the double life. I am a professional liar. You caught me a few times but you were so stupidly in love.

While Butch slowly becomes surrounded by naked mannequins he is delirious to what is going on around him. He is unaware that this is Coco’s “breakup” speech. Thru the small crowd gathering around him, he keeps his eyes focused on Coco.
Butch: (laughing) That night in New York driving back and forth through Times Square. You were like an excited little girl. Or that time driving around in Tampa, the sun an orange ball and the sky…. (Butch looking up and around pointing at the now glowing red lights of the theater)….the most beautiful sunsets EVER. Sryacuse. Fort Henry. Oswego. Wellesley Island. Point Pleasant. Cape May. New Hope.
Coco: (shaking her head and looking down) You are stuck in the past Butch…
Butch: …in the beach house just me and you…and the romantic rain
Coco: I liked you the most Butch…I did…I really did…the only way I know how to say goodbye is for you to become one of them….just another notch….a number….
At that moment one of the heads of a mannequin that a stage hand is carrying out falls off and rolls around on the stage.
Coco: I remember him….he was such a klutz..
Butch: (now almost completely covered by mannequins) That time in Boldt Castle, we were so in love, like little kids running around…in the car playing the Traveling Wiburys on the cassette player…
(singing now “Handle With Care” by The Traveling Wilburys) “He love’s yer sexy body, he loves yer sexy mind. He loves when you hold him, grab him from behind….Ohhhhhhh baby your such a tasty treat…
Coco: I stayed with you the longest..
Butch: (very low murmur) Remember when I beat you in that miniature golf game? The bet was any sexual favor you want….and all I wanted was for you to go through a day in a short skirt with no panties…
Coco: I was drawn to you in some strange way. Pulling excuses from my hat. You never knew. Nobody did. Fake smiles. Invisible doors. Mirrors. It was so easy. Too easy. One night stands. Outside. Inside. Married. Single. Cars. Hotels. Dating sites. Parties. Close friends. Just one quick smile. Oh hell, I could configure out a room full of men in thirty seconds and have sex with all of them within two days.
Butch: (his last muffled words) I love you Coco. Always and beyond….
Coco: I have to go now.
(Coco walks off the stage and halfway there she is met by a man dressed in a tuxedo. He takes her hand and they go off together. At this time all the lights die down and the customary applause from the crowd begins. When the house lights go on, the stagehands have begun moving the mannequins back off stage. They begin in the center and work towards the area where Butch was talking and has now been silent since the end of the play. As the crowd files out of the theater they may be able to see that when they reach the microphone that Butch was standing under there is indeed a life-like “Butch” mannequin. He is a little different then the others, almost identical to Butches looks. Shocking and ghastly looking as a stagehand picks him up and carries him off. Butch has indeed become “one of them.” A number.)

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For every ailment under the sun…

Posted on April 13, 2012 by George C. Hartman


For every aliment under the sun…there is a remedy, or there is none, If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it. -Mother Goose

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